Usable manpower ratio

[zdlugasz]

I have already suggested discussing some bug in bug forum, but since this is proper place for suggestions I place it here.

Generally some/many countries had part of population which was not allowed to serve in military at all or as time progressed would fill mostly auxiliary roles, e.g. drivers, logistic etc.
I am thinking mostly about racial prejudicies: black or colored people in South Africa, USA. But also nonnationals like Koreans in Japan etc.

Generally I would propose to add additional multiplicative in range (0,1] factor for the manpower.
This factor would be applicable to the existing relative_manpower from cores. As time/slider/events progress this modifier could be changed.
Maybe there could be another/disctinctive factor for non-national/non-cored provinces.

 

[Faulty]

That sounds interesting, but perhaps instead of a variable as you suggest it could be linked to the policy sliders? With prejudice penalties for political right and closed society, and bonuses for political left and open society.

 

[zdlugasz]

That sounds interesting, but perhaps instead of a variable as you suggest it could be linked to the policy sliders? With prejudice penalties for political right and closed society, and bonuses for political left and open society.

The main problem with closed/open society is that Nazi Germany were rather "closed", but all HAD to serve. E.g. a lot of people who considered themselves to be Poles, Silesians etc. and did not really want to serve, were forced to Serve in Wehrmacht. I guess that there were "exceptions" like Jews, Gipsies, homosexuals but they soon stopped to be 3rd Reich citizens, which means that more or less ALL had to serve.

On the opposite side you have USA, which I guess is perceived as "open" country (in game freedom = 10), and South Africa (freedom = 7). While I do not claim to be expert on US military history, I know that there was segregation and black were used mostly in support roles (were not fighting, especially during WW1). Loooking at the wiki page about US black in military I found that during WW2 they constituted only 6.5% of army and that 10% of Americans were African Americans. Even if we assume that their support role freed more whites to fight, number of healthy whites is not unlimited, thus quality of army was lower than maximum (additionally, I guess, that average education of whites was better, thus black could not take over more specialized, technical, etc. posts).
And South Africa:
during WW1 (according to Wiki) in army were: over 146000 whites, 83000 blacks and about 2500 coloured, while whites constituted about 20% of population only (and I wont make any guess about average education level among black population in south africa during ww1).
during WW2:

Of the 334,000 men volunteered for full time service in the South African Army during the war (including some 211,000 whites, 77,000 blacks and 46,000 Cape Coloureds and Asians),

 

[Faulty]

You're using different criteria for South Africa and Germany, why is that?

 

[zdlugasz]

I do not know how many Jews were in Germany say in 1936, but only 20% of population was white in RSA.

On the other hand so-called "mischlings" (mixed Jews-Aryan) still served in Wehrmacht. According to this wiki even 150000 did serve. So official policy regarding others is one thing and conscription is someting else. Germans conscripted almost everyone (and there were no second category troops for people of mixed origin), while in South Africa as you can see whites were majority in army.

And if you look at the freedom slider of Germany it is "bad" so USA (which put big part of its Japanese population into camps) and South Africa would get big benefits and Germany would be penalized.


Edit: freedom slider IMO is about secret police and gulags, not about recruitment criteria. My aim it to see realistic recuitment figures and I want to use the same criteria for every one.
However as far as I see Germans conscripted almost all their population, while some democratic countries used race segregation and had army composition to larger or smaller degree different than their population composition. Other issue is accessibility to education, which was unequal in "Allied" countries for different segments of their population, thus creating more limits and constraints on the possible army composition (I have no idea, but how many of Allied pilots were black?)

(and South Africa introduced Apartheid only after WW2)

 

[zdlugasz]

And I know that especially Hollywood movies should not be considered as a source of historical knowledge, but I think that political correctness would force producers to put at least enough (if not too much) people with African or Asian origin in last war productions.
Lets see:
Private Ryan, Thin Red Line, movie about Iwo Jima by Eastwood, TV series about Pacific campaign, ... how many black/asian guys are dying on Normany beaches, fighting in jungles in those movies?
I remember one Native American, but others?


It is not that I have simpathy for 3rd Reich because I do not. I and my family are from terrains 3rd Reich thought as German ones and I know that Germans did offer 3rd or 4th grade German citizenship to people with even trace of German ancestors and considered many of people living there as Germans did they want it or not. E.g. grandfather of current Polish prime minister did serve in Wehrmacht because he had to (because was born in area close to Danzig). My grandfather had 1/4 of German blood but he was officer in Polish army, so while he was in stalag my grandmother got 15 minutes to pack one luggage and was deported with a few months old child. My second grandfather was local official and only because of warning of a friendly German he escaped arrest and spend whole war hiding under false name in eastern part of Poland.

Simply speaking Germans were ready to use many (not all) kind of people.

 

[Faulty]

Killing substantial portions of your population really goes against the idea of "using many kinds of people". Likewise with conquests on the Eastern Front: since Hitler saw the war against the USSR as a war of extermination, he refused to make wide use of manpower at his disposal in the Baltic nations, the Ukraine, and even captured Soviet POWs, until it was too late. That goes completely against your thesis. I think a great demonstration of this is that only 1,300 Estonians served Germany by 1942, even though 4,500 of the USSR's 7,000 Estonian troops (the original Estonian armed forces prior to annexation) had been captured or defected at the early stages of the war.

As for the Allied powers, I agree that their position on the freedom slider is a poorly thought out product of Paradox's desire to create simple dichotomies between Allies, Axis and Communists. South Africa and other British colonies should clearly be close to the centre of the slider, and Britain and America should be two thirds along. On the left/right axis, the use of women in the workplace shows that their moderate governments were in the centre, whereas the Fascists and Nazis, with chauvinism as a central pillar of their ideology, viewed women largely as baby factories.

The power that made the absolute most out of its population, the USSR, went further than Britain and America and were willing to use women in combat roles because they were on the far left. Their murder of political opponents and potential dissidents which reduced their available manpower is represented with a low freedom slider.

 

[zdlugasz]

I am ready to change my position slightly (regarding usage of sliders at least), but I can not agree regarding status of Germany.

According to what I found wiki and holocaust encyclopedia in 1933 Jews constitued about 0.7% of German population - about 500000(and 20% of them were not even German citizens), and that number dropped to 200000 in 1939 and further 40000 emmigrated before 1941 when emmigration was forbidden. Even taking 200000 figure we are talking about LESS than 0.3% of population!

So I have to strongly disagree that Hitler was killing substantial portion of his population. We could add communists, unionists, homosexuals and other "undesirables" but I think that total number would not exceed 0.5% - 1% of German population (my guess) - reading about Dachau I found that on average it hold 3000 Germans, and some of political prisoners were treated completely differently than Jews, Poles and Russians.
I could bet that Stalin killed higher percentage of his population in gulags.


And so we have to define what "your own population" means. IMO after Barbarossa Hitler did not capture any "his own territories" nor much "his own population". True that some Germans lived in Baltics, but according to the Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty they should migrate to Germany within 2 months (and my grandmother was deported (among other things) to make place for Baltic Germans).
I am not an expert on Estonia but I could say: Yes, Germany conquered Baltics, including Estonia. But did Hitler promise Estonians independent Estonia? They did not want to fight for Soviets (after what happened when Stalin annexed Estonia) and defected. It seems to me that with so low German input Hitler got quite good number of people.

So Germans excluded/exterminated few hundred thousand of their citizens. On the other hand Germans created Volksliste - granting different kid of priviliged status. According to previous page it were over 3 million people, thus order of magnitude more than number of Jews.
In my books it counts as "using many kinds of people" (especially adding all those "too late" additions you have ennumerated).
So the eventual German modifiers should be: 0.995 in Germany and nevertheless quite positive factor in occupied Poland, and smaller one in Baltics and other regions.

IMO 0.995 could be represented as 1 for all practical reasons. This why I would leave German manpower in Germany unmodified but reduce South African, USA's etc at the same time.

Edit: depending of assumed timeframe and type one could count number of Stalins' victims among his own population as high as 10 or even 15 millions (with overall population 100 million in 1930 and 108 million in 1939). Even if we exclude victims of famine in 30-ties (which were result of Stalin's policy) we still get 5-10% of population.
Edit2: Wrong figure: those 100/108 millions were for Russia alone, Soviet Union in 1939 had 168 millions, so we get sth between 3% and 6% (and maybe up to 10% with famine victims)

 

[NikephorosSonar]

Killing substantial portions of your population really goes against the idea of "using many kinds of people". Likewise with conquests on the Eastern Front: since Hitler saw the war against the USSR as a war of extermination, he refused to make wide use of manpower at his disposal in the Baltic nations, the Ukraine, and even captured Soviet POWs, until it was too late. That goes completely against your thesis. I think a great demonstration of this is that only 1,300 Estonians served Germany by 1942, even though 4,500 of the USSR's 7,000 Estonian troops (the original Estonian armed forces prior to annexation) had been captured or defected at the early stages of the war.

As for the Allied powers, I agree that their position on the freedom slider is a poorly thought out product of Paradox's desire to create simple dichotomies between Allies, Axis and Communists. South Africa and other British colonies should clearly be close to the centre of the slider, and Britain and America should be two thirds along. On the left/right axis, the use of women in the workplace shows that their moderate governments were in the centre, whereas the Fascists and Nazis, with chauvinism as a central pillar of their ideology, viewed women largely as baby factories.

The power that made the absolute most out of its population, the USSR, went further than Britain and America and were willing to use women in combat roles because they were on the far left. Their murder of political opponents and potential dissidents which reduced their available manpower is represented with a low freedom slider.

The Democratic/Authoritarian slider represents the government's power over it's citizens, not the issues of civil rights, which even then Britain and the US were among the best in that regard.

The Left/Right slider also does not represent how feminist a society is, it represents what said government's priorities are.

The 2 sliders are made so the governments can be determined, and they are relative, not absolute.

But yes, Paradox did set up the sliders to emphasize the difference between the Axis and the Allies, because those differences were in fact that immense.

 

[Faulty]

zdlugasz, you've totally ignored the role of women, and the 3.5 million German nationals who spent time in concentration camps.

Also stop with the weird "only 0.3%" crap, it reeks of apologism.

The Democratic/Authoritarian slider represents the government's power over it's citizens, not the issues of civil rights, which even then Britain and the US were among the best in that regard.

Open/closed, not democratic/authoritarian. The event files call the slider freedom.

The Left/Right slider also does not represent how feminist a society is, it represents what said government's priorities are.

And one priority of left governments is gender equality (such as allowing women into universities, like the Bolsheviks - Ayn Rand got her education thanks to collectivists, which I find incredibly funny), and one priority of right governments is enforcing gender stereotypes (like when the Nazis forced women out of universities).

 

[zdlugasz]

zdlugasz, you've totally ignored the role of women, and the 3.5 million German nationals who spent time in concentration camps.

Also stop with the weird "only 0.3%" crap, it reeks of apologism.

All this discussion just strengthen my opinion that each country should have its own modifier, regardless should it be lower or higher.

In forth post you were surprised that I think that South Africa should get less manpower than Germany. I tried to explain my position.
In seventh post you said "killing substantial portion of your population" so I checked how many German Jews were killed and it was about 200000 (cunting Austrian Jews as well giving about 0.2%). I do not know exact number of other Germans killed in camps, I mad some guess and said that Stain killed much, much more his citizens.
Now you are saying that ignore number of imprisoned Germans. Wel, I did, but it is the first time you mention them.
I was trying to check that 3.5 mln figure and wikipedia in article about Nazi camps says 3.5 millions Germans spend some time in camps or prisons for political reasons. If you can say how low (on average) they stayed, how many died within we could estimate "loss" of manpower. On the other hand how many Soviet citizens spend some time in gulags?

I do not want to be offensive, but you sound cripto-communist sometimes.
I can not coment on role of women, since I not feel competent. I agree that Soviets did maximize usage of womens while right-side countries usually try to limit it. I know that Allies used them as clerks, in intelligence etc. I do not have any numbers.

Overall I still keep my initial opinion that South African manpower should be seriously nerfed and USA's somewhat (regardles of German policies).

 

[Faulty]

I wasn't "surprised" by South Africa and I don't understand your obsession with Stalin. I can't say how long the 3.5 million Germans spent in camps and it doesn't actually matter all that much.

 

[zdlugasz]

Regarding those 3.5 million Germans, IMO it matters. What I found says that they were in prisons and camps. Some like Hjalmar Schacht were old, or were put into camp late during war, etc.
And if somebody spend say 3 years in prison he is counted within those 3.5 millions even if he was conscripted later.

Regarding women I found some numbers: 800 000 in Soviet army (which is 2.3% of total army) and for USA 350 000 (2.1%). So yeah, numbers are impressive, but as % it is small.
And when I think about allied women service I wonder: how many of them were colored/black? I guess that % would be much smaller than for grunts at least partially because of segregation and partially because of required education level (clerks, nurses).


Edit: so it would mean that USA used proportionally higher % of white women than Soviets (total % of women). Thus your proposal of using left slider to include women does not work.

Regarding prisoners: I have found different estimates of number of Gulag prisoners, labor settlement inmates, etc. but roughly it could be about 20+ millions in years 1930-1953. Using 2/3 of this figure we would get about 12 millions for period 1930-1945 (however during war Soviets put more prisoners into penal companies and shuffled into the German meat ginder). Still by my count it is higher % of population than for Germany.
People were leaving Gulags, however many of them were human wrecks sometimes dying very soon, still some might have been conscripted (how many I have no idea, same as for Germany).

Why I am writing about Soviets again and again: to show that if you want to apply any manpower maluses due to camps, executions etc. then Stalin should get bigger malus and (IMO puny 2%) women in army bonus does not mean much.
And victims of Stalinism were not only (or even mainly) his opponents. In fact political prisoners were minority in Gulags, and kulaks were Stalin opponents only in very theoretically-ideological sense - they just wanted to work on their own land (or maybe owned some land).

 

[Faulty]

Regarding those 3.5 million Germans, IMO it matters. What I found says that they were in prisons and camps. Some like Hjalmar Schacht were old, or were put into camp late during war, etc.
And if somebody spend say 3 years in prison he is counted within those 3.5 millions even if he was conscripted later.

Regarding women I found some numbers: 800 000 in Soviet army (which is 2.3% of total army) and for USA 350 000 (2.1%). So yeah, numbers are impressive, but as % it is small.
And when I think about allied women service I wonder: how many of them were colored/black? I guess that % would be much smaller than for grunts at least partially because of segregation and partially because of required education level (clerks, nurses).


Edit: so it would mean that USA used proportionally higher % of white women than Soviets (total % of women). Thus your proposal of using left slider to include women does not work.

Regarding prisoners: I have found different estimates of number of Gulag prisoners, labor settlement inmates, etc. but roughly it could be about 20+ millions in years 1930-1953. Using 2/3 of this figure we would get about 12 millions for period 1930-1945 (however during war Soviets put more prisoners into penal companies and shuffled into the German meat ginder). Still by my count it is higher % of population than for Germany.
People were leaving Gulags, however many of them were human wrecks sometimes dying very soon, still some might have been conscripted (how many I have no idea, same as for Germany).

Why I am writing about Soviets again and again: to show that if you want to apply any manpower maluses due to camps, executions etc. then Stalin should get bigger malus and (IMO puny 2%) women in army bonus does not mean much.
And victims of Stalinism were not only (or even mainly) his opponents. In fact political prisoners were minority in Gulags, and kulaks were Stalin opponents only in very theoretically-ideological sense - they just wanted to work on their own land (or maybe owned some land).

Wikipedia's source for 800,000 says that it was 8% of the combat troops
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1982/jan-feb/obrien.html
The page doesn't say 800,000 so that must have been interpreted by a Wikipedia editor and the actual figure will be higher accounting for non-combat troops such as those used by America and Britain. Germany, on the other hand, was hesitant to even introduce women into vital war industries until they'd already lost the war at Stalingrad.

If Stalin shuffled penal troops into the meatgrinder they weren't lost manpower as far as the game is concerned, just lower quality militia units or whatever.

 

[zdlugasz]

If Stalin shuffled penal troops into the meatgrinder they weren't lost manpower as far as the game is concerned, just lower quality militia units or whatever.

But only for three years, all years before they went to Gulags and penal colonies (and you may start even in 1933). And according to some paper about pre-war Gulags I have less then 10% of inmates were women, and majority of men were in conscript age.


Regarding women - I think that better sources are required because even page you give contradicts stated 8% figure later on: sentence

From the wartime strength of approximately one million women in uniform

would imply that Red Army had maximum 12 million soldiers, while different sources state that Soviet losses were in order of 10 million alone. Wiki says that Soviets conscripted almost 30 million with initial army almost 5 million, which looks better IMO, giving over 34.5 million total (and even one million women would represent 2.8% of strength).
Assuming that author did know what she was writing about I would say that what she meant is that at any given time 8% were women. Some served as line troops, bt I would say that minority :

While 40 percent of the medical officers at the front were women, the greatest percentage of women served in rear areas to release men for combat duty

which would mean that "attrition" of women was substantially smaller than that of men. And 8% at any given time in fact results in less than 3% overall.

Still, even if big part of Soviet manpower losses is reduced (somewhat) by this 3 or 8% we can not generalize that all stalinist/leninist regimes used women to the same extend.
this link says that women were only 1% of Long March (however reliable is it).

 

[Faulty]

But only for three years, all years before they went to Gulags and penal colonies (and you may start even in 1933). And according to some paper about pre-war Gulags I have less then 10% of inmates were women, and majority of men were in conscript age.

Sure but the wartime years were the time of highest Gulag mortality (due to the loss of the Ukrainian breadbasket and shortages of food)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Gulag_mortality_rate_1934_1953.PNG

Regarding women - I think that better sources are required because even page you give contradicts stated 8% figure later on: sentence

From the wartime strength of approximately one million women in uniform

would imply that Red Army had maximum 12 million soldiers, while different sources state that Soviet losses were in order of 10 million alone. Wiki says that Soviets conscripted almost 30 million with initial army almost 5 million, which looks better IMO, giving over 34.5 million total (and even one million women would represent 2.8% of strength).
Assuming that author did know what she was writing about I would say that what she meant is that at any given time 8% were women. Some served as line troops, bt I would say that minority :

While 40 percent of the medical officers at the front were women, the greatest percentage of women served in rear areas to release men for combat duty

which would mean that "attrition" of women was substantially smaller than that of men. And 8% at any given time in fact results in less than 3% overall.

Still, even if big part of Soviet manpower losses is reduced (somewhat) by this 3 or 8% we can not generalize that all stalinist/leninist regimes used women to the same extend.
this link says that women were only 1% of Long March (however reliable is it).

Obviously the conservative Chinese peasantry didn't have ideologically correct thought patterns at that time (Mao helped remedy this to some extent during the cultural revolution). More proletarianised nations had proportionally larger contributions from women, such as the two million Yugoslavian women partisans who fought alongside four million men.

 

[zdlugasz]

Sure but the wartime years were the time of highest Gulag mortality (due to the loss of the Ukrainian breadbasket and shortages of food)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Gulag_mortality_rate_1934_1953.PNG

And I thought we were discussing number of prisoners, not deaths (since you did not like my calculation of killed Jews and guesstimate of other deaths). Anyway it is absolute quantity of deaths that matter and Gulags do not include kulaks, people shot with or without process, purges, shot deserters, victims of famine and many others factors so I am at loss what does this figure prove.

While comparing merits of both systems has its charms and is educational, what I was trying to say at the beginning is that some Allies obtain to much manpower because racial segregation and unequal education among other things are not taken into account (in comparison with other European countries with uniform racial composition).

 

[zdlugasz]

Edit: Double post due to forum hang up

Edit2: Regarding Yugoslavia: AFAIK there were about 100000 women in National Liberation Army, those 2 million were in AntiFascist Front of Women, which was support organization, not army.
According to marxist theory they were not proletariat anyway (neither Chinese nor Yugoslavian women) since they came predominantly from rural (agrarian) communities, see Engels: in point 8.
And God forbid, some of them my have even owned some means of production or land.

Anyway talking about Yugoslavai is pointless, since it was occupied country and can not be represented in game.

 

[Faulty]

And I thought we were discussing number of prisoners, not deaths (since you did not like my calculation of killed Jews and guesstimate of other deaths). Anyway it is absolute quantity of deaths that matter and Gulags do not include kulaks, people shot with or without process, purges, shot deserters, victims of famine and many others factors so I am at loss what does this figure prove.

Yep, the USSR's freedom slider should certainly stay at the lowest value.

While comparing merits of both systems has its charms and is educational, what I was trying to say at the beginning is that some Allies obtain to much manpower because racial segregation and unequal education among other things are not taken into account (in comparison with other European countries with uniform racial composition).

Which is fair enough and I agree. The system I proposed would rectify this if the freedom sliders were based more in reality than rhetoric.

 

[zdlugasz]

Which is fair enough and I agree. The system I proposed would rectify this if the freedom sliders were based more in reality than rhetoric.

But your system would give "leftist" women bonus to the Soviets and malus to Germany, while, AFAIS, Stalin should be more penalized than Hitler.